Being the Continuing Adventures of a Woman and her Trusty Kayak in New York Harbor, the Hudson River, and Beyond.
(with occasional political rants just to keep things lively!)

Tuesday, May 09, 2006

Sorry, today's post had to go...

I had put up a lunch hour post featuring a few pictures from my Newark Bay picnic paddle on Sunday - something is wrong with Blogger's photo upload feature, though, and 3 of the pictures were too big & fouled up the formatting completely so my blogrolls were all waaaay down underneath all the posts, and the 4 was postage-stamp sized, and it was a sort of half-baked post for the sake of posting anyways.

I've got a lot going on right now - lemmesee...

*work work (just found out one of my co-workers is leaving, I could just cry, it's been so nice being at full staff for a few months - well, at least he waited 'til budget season was over) *schooner work (I told you the internal debate would end the minute the boat turned up)*I've been organizing a small Greenland intensive day with Cheri and Turner (it actually appears to be coming together and I'm very pleasantly surprised - I hope I am not speaking too soon though, there is one tiny remaining detail which is um obtaining a day use permit for the beach I'm hoping to use - I'm just paranoid because other than that everything is coming together far too smoothly). *Waterfrickinfrontfrickin politics...there's some weird stuff going on at Pier 63 involving the infamous north-side launch restrictions - if you're an NYC paddler & unsure, yes, I know Pier 64 is down to a piling field right now & no more inherently dangerous than any other piling field, doesn't matter, the rules have been clearly laid down & they say no launching or landing on the north side of Pier 63. There's been some confusion; I'm lobbying to get the Hudson River Park Trust's dockmaster for our section to come in & actually talk to people at the pier. The secondhand email thing that's been done so far doesn't seem to be working, there've been miscommunications and a lot of the more seasonal folks who are starting to turn up haven't necessarily gotten the word, I'm just hoping that I can get somebody to come in, meet us in person, talk to us, answer questions & hopefully clarify everything so we don't end up losing launch privileges (I don't even know what I would do...) - this is the sort of thing that just makes me very, very tired sometimes but it just has to be dealt with. Makes my head hurt, though. *Last but not least on the looming-stuff list - but a good one - is the Hudson Valley Kayak Symposium". I'm teaching there for the 2nd year and that is coming up faster than I realized and I have some preparation to do. This also makes me a little sad 'cause last year that ended up being my last teaching gig for the year - I'm so backwards, normal people teach in the summer, take a break in the winter - oh well, so I'm weird.

Long sob story short (oops, too late), I seem to have an awful lot on my plate right now, so things may get a little sparse around here for a while. That's one nice thing about blogging - it's easy to put it on the back burner when everything else in your life seems to be boiling over simultaneously. Yeesh. I do have a lot of nice pictures of Renata's departure, and Newark Bay (yup), and the Volvo Ocean Race finish line scene (thanks to Jarrett at June23rd.com for making me aware that they were actually coming in before work - I didn't get going early enough to see the pack of 4 that came in close together but I saw the 6th-place Brunel finish - gorgeous boats - the sailors aren't too bad either, heh heh, the boats are at North Cove tomorrow & I think they start again on Thursday afternoon, totally worth a visit if you like boats - and if you don't like boats what on earth are you doing here? ;D) and I can't remember what else - maybe I'll just make a photo blog for a while, save myself the writing part.

Oh, and speaking of Newark Bay - the gist of the earlier post with the formatting problems was basically that if anyone ever invites you to go on a picnic paddle in Newark Bay, turn them down unless they are talking about a put-in on the Hackensack River. Nice group to paddle with, beautiful day, and the bay itself was interesting in an desolate, industrial waterfront sort of way. Of you saw my whole "alas poor Pier 64" series you know I actually do find visual interest in that stuff - I really liked some of the photos I got out of this trip, in fact, I just don't plan to repeat it. Problem is, it was just not interesting enough to warrant the 4 crossings of the Kill Van Kull it turns out that you have to do to get there from Manhattan. The Kill Van Kull is a MAJOR, MAJOR shipping channel, out in the middle of it not a comfortable place to be in a kayak, and 4 times in one day is more stress than I needed. I guess I'm glad I did it once & satisfied my curiousity but that is not going on the "trips worth repeating" list!